Peter said:

I’ll stick with normals. Whether @Alan-Kilborn wants to go that route is up to him.

I took Peter’s “advice” and changed my ButtonFace to (224, 224, 224). This indeed makes the “inactive-but-inside” function in the list have better noticeability, without having any other negatives elsewhere in the Notepad++ (or Windows) UI.

I’m keeping that setting! :-)

In this screenshot the focus was at the editor and I was moving the caret.
This is how it looks like when the function list has the focus and an item is selected

by using a dark theme

Well now, THERE’s some contrast!

But I’m confused, is that your display when you’ve just clicked on something in the Function List, or is that merely the function you are in as you are navigating the editor window? (Neither appears to be the case from the data shown?)

or by using a dark theme :-D

Nice to know that same key works on both WinXP and Win10 for controlling it.

I guess having WinXP still around does indeed have some usefulness! :-)

Nope, that just launches , which doesn’t allow setting the individual colors.

@guy038 ,

Nice to know that same key works on both WinXP and Win10 for controlling it. My guess is that the “button” is the default “3d object” in old windows nomenclature, and they just stuck with that naming convention, even as things changed through the decades.

Peter, you’re right ! The color of current function, in the Function List panel, seems to be controlled from the colors of the ButtonFace key !

Here is my \HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors, on my Win XP laptop :

As you can see, Peter, only two keys ( ButtonFace and MenuBar ) have colors 236, 233, 216, in my Win XP configuration

We can see that the different keys are always the same, between win XP and Win 10! ! But, strangely, no reference to a 3D Objects key, seems to be visible in registry ?

Best Regards,

guy038

The good news is, it just took logging out and back in – rather than a full reboot – to change ButtonFace to 224 224 224 for a slightly darker grey, and Menu back to default 240 240 240 (don’t need the green underline)

The ButtonFace = 224 224 224 looks like it’s more noticeable, while not being annoyingly darker on the other instances than it usually is. But it’s still noticeably darker in those instances, like the save dialog.

I’ll stick with normals. Whether @Alan-Kilborn wants to go that route is up to him.

(And I will justify this as still Notepad++ related rather than just Windows related because we were trying to figure out specifically which color setting in Windows was affecting that aspect of Notepad++ :-)

I had changed ButtonFace from 240 240 240 (grey, above) to 255 0 0 (bright red). The green underline came from changing Menu to 0 255 0 (bright green). I cannot see what has been changed by MenuBar being changed to 0 0 255 (bright blue).

Oh, there, MenuBar appears to affect the “active button” highlight color:
In the SaveAs, it appears to be the main highlight:

But other dialogs (like Plugins Admin) seem to use their normal colors, I think.

Unfortunately, changing the ButtonFace seems to be a pretty drastic change for @Alan-Kilborn’s purposes, especially with the number of items it affects – many of which you really want a light background. You might be able to get away with making it dark enough to be more visible, without ruining other things… but no guarantees.

Win 10 got rid of that dialog completely (it may have been Win8 that did it – but I confirmed via SO that it was a change sometime between Win7 and Win10).

However, \HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors is where at least Win7 stored the results of that dialog. I cannot identify any from that key which might correspond to 3D objects.

Could you look in the registry at that location and see whether you have entries that don’t exist in the Win10 screenshot, and/or whether you can see which entry changes when you change the 3D Objects > color 1? (it will probably require refreshing the registry view, or reloading regedit between changes)

Looking at the numbers, 240 is 0xF0, so for my system, where that is shaded grey, it might be one of the ButtonFace, Menu, or MenuBar colors… but I don’t know for sure. The SO article mentioned that you might have to reboot for changes to the registry-only version to take place (though log out/in might do it). However, I make no guarantees whether or not it will. I have changed those three to red, green, and blue, respectively; when I hit a stopping point in a few minutes, I’ll probably reboot to see what happens – and whether I can see those change or not.

Yeeeeah, I found the right parameter ! At least…, in Win XP ! Starting with the @andrecool-68 indications :

• Right-click on an empty zone of screen and choose the Poprerties option

• Click on the penultimate tab Appearance

• Click on the Advanced Settings button, at the bottom right of the dialog

• In the drop-down list Element, select the item 3D Objects

• The present and default color 1 has RGB values 236, 233, 216, which are, exactly, the hex values ECE9D8, given in my previous post !

IMPORTANT : I don’t know if the 3D objets item is still present in Windows 7, 8 and 10 !

Best Regards,

guy038

Inactive highlight color

Yea, that’s the one that I’m concerned with.
In the Function List, it’s just too hard to see to be useful at a glance.
Sure, if you’re really putting in effort to see it, you can…but that seems to somewhat defeat the purpose.

As for me, the color,on my Win XP laptop is, also, a kind of light grey ( #ECE9D8 in hexa RGB )

I relalized, after some tests with the NppQCP plugin, that this color value is exactly the same as the color of my N++ menu bar ;-))

Best Regards,

guy038

That is pretty light; I can see it if I’m looking for it… but I could see how different monitors might be better or worse at displaying that light color. Unfortunately, none of the entries in the default stylers.xml is F0F0F0, so it’s apparently not StyleConfigurator-settable.

I think the background shading color is the same as that used in the Doc Switcher window, but Doc Switcher has the advantage in that the whitespace in the “line” to the right of the filename text is also shaded, making it much easier to see the active file.

Not so for the Function List window; it’s only the text background itself that is shaded for the active function.